@ WRM – “The barefoot, blind lawyer from China is apparently on a flight bound for the US, and there are huge sighs of relief in both the Foreign Ministry in Beijing and at the US Department of State.”

I am in the middle of a big China kick right now, reading Chinese history backwards so to say (we live life forwards but understand it backwards), starting with the People’s Republic, then first half of the last century, Qing Dynasty, Ming, Yuan, Song, Tang, and so on right back to the Han and Confucius before that.

One of my conclusions is that it isn’t the corruption of contemporary Chinese society that is the problem. It is the corruption of Chinese civilization. From the beginning it has been set up in such a way as to virtually guarantee endemic corruption from top to bottom. Of course all autocratic societies have been corrupt to some degree. It goes with the territory. But China is unique. It has never had even the glimmer of countervailing centers of power, not even a bunch of barons or a landed aristocracy competing for dominance.

There was nothing like the Roman Senate during the republic or even the pretense of a Senate under the Roman emperors; no college of cardinals, no Doge, no Medieval parliaments, no self-governing towns, no republican traditions whatsoever.

China has always been governed autocratically and bureaucratically from the top; a small mandarin elite (less than one ten-thousandth of the population) serving at the Emperor’s pleasure was in absolute charge of local and regional administration: tax assessment and collection and law enforcement primarily, where the local yamin was prosecutor, judge, and jury all rolled into one. (Only Russia comes close — and they got their model from East Asia.)

Of course there was competition at the very top just like in Tudor England, Rome, or any other absolute monarchy — a sordid tale of regicide, murder, deceit, and of course graft, bribery, fraud, extortion, blackmail and every sort of palace intrigue imaginable. But short of revolution or foreign conquest there was never a mechanism for reform. Each new dynasty took up from where the last one ended, with maybe a reduction in taxes for the first generation or two.

I bring this up in connection with this discussion here, where two American experts are wondering whether a Leninist political party is China’s “original sin.” The sad truth is there’s nothing original about it. Chinese civilization itself is corrupt, and has been from the time it was established. Our educated elites are unable to get their heads around this possibility. I hold our universities responsible. The history of Western civilization went out the door a generation ago. How could we possibly know anything about the history of Chinese civilization?

I wonder what Wei Jingsheng thinks? I’m pretty sure about Lu Xun cause he just gave me the idea in these beautiful essays which I highly recommend.

I agree. As different as they are, both China and the US are countries that understand win win and know how important it is to avoid unnecessary win lose situations. I wont name them, but some cultures only know how to do win lose. In very broad perspective I see the win win cultures moving on and leaving the win lose ones further and further behind. But the win lose types will cause many problems before its over.

“On 8 December 2008, Liu was detained because of his participation with the Charter 08 manifesto. He was formally arrested on 23 June 2009 on suspicion of “inciting subversion of state power.”[4][5] He was tried on the same charges on 23 December 2009,[6] and sentenced to eleven years’ imprisonment and two years’ deprivation of political rights on 25 December 2009”

Check out that Charter 08 manifesto link. This is 30 years after Wei Jingsheng! There is not an iota of evidence that China will ever reform without outside pressure. And the longer we wait the less pressure we can apply. The West has the means still if we work with our allies.

Otherwise we are creating an 800 lbs. monster and losing our soul into the bargain.

How about democratic reform in Taiwan? Isn’t that a hopeful sign of the possibilities? I don’t know. Taiwan is a very small country and U.S., influence has been immense. Even so, apparently it didn’t really happen: